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Author
Topic: Infected or not? (Read 2172 times)

I'm a guy of 24 years old.The 1st of June I had protected sex with a guy with HIV, undetectable and on medications. Unfortunately during sex the condom broke. I went to sexual clinic to get the PEP inside the 24hours and I did the treatment for 28days. Just a delay of 6hours the last day of treatment.

I did all the follow ups at the sex clinic and everything was fine. (I had some nausea and diarrhoea during the treatment and one day of high temperature)

The 23rd of July (so after 7/8 weeks from the possible infection) I had few days of high temperature and 4/5days of sore throat.I was quite worried and I decided to do another test. I did the prick test at the sexual clinic that resulted negative.How is this test accurate?If those were seroconversion symptoms the test should have been positive, right?

At the moment I have some lymph nodes below my right hear bigger than usual and i alternate days of normal feces to diarrhoea. I'm a bit worried.What shall I do?

Pig, none of the symptoms you are reporting are in any way HIV specific. And it would be highly unusual for you to be seroconverting at this point. You did the smart thing by doing PEP. If you were the insertive partner (which is not clear in what you wrote) then the risk would be even lower.

This is the calendar for testing post-PEP. You can test initially at 6 weeks after completing the PEP regimen. If your result is negative then it is very likely you will test negative at 3 months post-PEP and that result would be conclusively reliable.

Given what you have described I would say the odds are in your favor that your are going to come out of this HIV negative.

As for your symptoms, you should discuss them with your doctor if they persist. And please keep your hands off of your nodes. They are highly sensitive to touch and by bothering them you can create a problem. Again, they are something to discuss with your doctor.

Give all you have reported I expect this incident to end happily for you.

I was receptive that night and unfortunately i can't tell how long we played with the broken condom before realise that was broken. We didn't realise it straight away.

When I went to the clinic for the test during the sore throat and the high temperature the doctor said that could have been just a tonsillitis.My question is: if I do a test during seroconversion should the result be positive or negative? Is a prick test enough?

I know for sure that stress is not helping and I guess that some symptoms can be also related to this...

I'm sorry if I bother again...few days ago, before writing on this forum I wrote to the clinic that is following me asking the same questions I asked here.

this is their message: The rapid HIV test is very sensitive but it does have a window period of 12 weeks. This means that if you have had an exposure less than 12 weeks before taking the test (as in your case), and you are seroconverting, it may not show up on the test.

I really don't understand who/what shall I trust...I still have some diarrhoea and keep thinking about it it's just making things worst.

You have to count your testing window from your last dose of PEP. This means that you tested at about three and a half weeks. If the discomfort you were experiencing when you did the test had anything to do with seroconversion, you would have tested indeterminate at the very least.

The illness associated with primary hiv infection that some (not all) people experience is not due to the virus itself. It is due to the process a the body goes through while producing antibodies. This is why hiv-related ARS (aka seroconversion illness) is no different to symptoms produced by the flu - both are simply signs that the body is producing some antibodies.

The vast majority of people who have actually been infected will seroconvert and test positive by six weeks (or six weeks post-PEP), with the average time to seroconversion being only 22 days (or 22 days post-PEP). A six week (or six weeks post-PEP) or more negative must be confirmed at the three month (or three months post-PEP) point, but is highly unlikely to change.

You were unlikely to end up positive over this condom break, PEP or no PEP. Get busy with other things while you wait for the appropriate time to test again.

"...health will finally be seen not as a blessing to be wished for, but as a human right to be fought for." Kofi Annan

Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man. Mignon McLaughlin

HIV is certainly character-building. It's made me see all of the shallow things we cling to, like ego and vanity. Of course, I'd rather have a few more T-cells and a little less character. Randy Shilts